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BOTSWANA

Botswana Daily News Online, 30 March 2005

House approves bill on corporal punishment

PARLIAMENT -
Parliament has approved the Customary Courts (Amendment)
Bill which seeks to broaden the age limit for which
corporal punishment may be imposed and to rationalise the
sections of the law dealing with related punishments.

Assistant
local government minister Ambrose Masalila said when
presenting the bill to Parliament Thursday that corporal
punishment was currently imposed as a specific punishment
for specified offences.

Masalila
said everyday offences such as common assault, use of
insulting language, malicious damage to property, theft
and forgery are not included.

He said the
Court of Appeal has held that it is undesirable to impose
corporal punishment in addition to a long term of
imprisonment.

This
decision quashed the corporal punishment for offences
such as rape, defilement and robbery for which minimum
prison term is prescribed by law.

Corporal
punishment may also not be afflicted upon females, or
upon males aged more than 40. In performing their duties
customary courts have to impose prison sentences where
relevant, even for minor cases, resulting in congestion
in prisons.

To facilitate this, it is proposed to amend Section 18 of
the Customary Courts Act to raise the maximum age for
corporal punishment from 40 to 50.

The proposed
amendment was referred to Ntlo ya Dikgosi in November
last year as required by the Constitution, and Ntlo ya
Dikgosi agreed.

Offences
that corporal punishment can currently be imposed on are
aggravated rape with violence, attempted rape, indecent
assault, attempted defilement, defilement of imbeciles
and procurement by pimps.

Others are
living off the earnings of prostitution (second offence),
attempted murder by a convict, disabling in order to
commit an offence, endangering the safety of a person
travelling by rail, assault occasioning actual bodily
harm, robbery, housebreaking and burglary and related
offences.

Robert
Molefhabangwe, the MP for Gaborone West South opposed the
bill because he does not want to endorse any form of
barbaric torture.

Molefhabangwe
said it was time Botswana abolished all forms of barbaric
torture in line with international conventions, adding
that it was neither here nor there to argue whether one
gender was physically correct to be subjected to whipping
by the cane.

Pono
Moatlhodi of Tonota South supported the proposal to
administer corporal punishment without discrimination so
as to reduce congestion in prisons.

Botlogile
Tshireletso of Mahalapye East said she supported corporal
punishment because it would help reduce congestion in
prisons.

Tshireletso
said she is opposed to whipping of women because their
bodies where not physically strong to withstand it, hence
the Setswana saying that "Ya mosimane ke e
nkgwe", meaning that corporal punishment was
traditionally for males. BOPA